Investment banks on both sides of the Atlantic have parted ways with senior bankers covering the lucrative market for technology, media and telecoms deals.

The head of media investment banking for Credit Suisse in Europe, the Middle East and Africa has left the bank, at a time when global deal value in the media sector is at its highest since 2000.

Alastair Blackman left the bank this month. He joined Credit Suisse from Deutsche Bank in 2005 and is now returning to the German bank as head of media in Emea, according to an internal Deutsche Bank memo seen by Financial News. Blackman will report to TMT heads Gavin Deane in London and Chris Colpitts in San Francisco.

It is not known whether the Swiss bank will appoint a replacement to run the media team, which finished 2013 in third position in Dealogic’s European media M&A rankings, but which lies outside the top 10 for the year-to-date.

At Credit Suisse, Blackman was responsible for overall coverage of the media sector, including broadcasting, content, directories, newspapers and consumer magazines.

During his time at the bank he worked on deals including the $4.4 billion acquisition of Springer Science and Business Media by BC Partners last year and the merger of Orbit Communications and Showtime Arabia to create OSN in 2009, according to the memo.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that Anthony Noto, global co-head of Goldman Sachs's technology, media and telecoms group, is to join $9 billion New York hedge fund Coatue Management. Noto was one of the investment bankers who worked on the 2013 IPO of Twitter. His co-head Dan Dees will now assume sole leadership of the TMT team at Goldman Sachs.

Global media deal value has reached $116 billion for the year-to-date, according to Dealogic, its highest value for the period since 2000. The biggest deals announced in the sector this year include Time Warner’s proposed $45 billion tie-up with Comcast and Liberty Global’s €6.9 billion acquisition of Dutch cable operator Ziggo.

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Investment banks are scrambling to take advantage of the long-awaited recovery of the M&A market, with a flurry of deals last month taking global deal value past the $1 trillion mark faster than at any time since 2007.

• Separately, Stefanos Papapanagiotou, a Credit Suisse managing director who led Greece and Cyprus investment banking, has joined Swiss rival UBS, according to an internal UBS memo seen by Financial News. He will be head of corporate client solutions for Greece and Cyprus at UBS and report to William Vereker, head of corporate client solutions in Emea.

Papapanagiotou spent nine years at Credit Suisse, where he worked on the premium listing of Coca Cola Hellenic Bottling Company on the London Stock Exchange in 2013 and the sale of a stake in Hellenic Telecommunications to Deutsche Telekom in 2008, according to investor relations services provider Capital Link.